MUV: a novel approach to tackling urban mobility challenges– Presented by Karen Soens, LUCA School of Arts, at the Creative Ring Sum-It, on October 23, at Designhuis in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Karen Soens will deliver the presentation together with Wio D’Hespeel.

Where has the ‘mobile’ in urban ‘mobility’ gone? Cities usually tackle the Mobility Challenge with impressive infrastructural interventions, urban planning, smart traffic systems, etc. A more service design based approach is currently also catching on quite well, sometimes fuelled by a co-creative design approach.

MUV is exploring a totally new angle: gameplay! How can a game have an impact on (local) mobility behaviour. Can the data recorded and generated by the game be the glue that holds together an ecosystem of inhabitants, policy makers, local organisations and businesses, hackers and makers, data specialists and municipality departments?

InterviewWhat drives you?
Empowering people to have an impact on their environment

What are the three things you would take with you on a deserted island?
Music, a floating matras and a survival guide

What emerging technologies/trends do you see as having the greatest potential in the short and long run?
Design thinking

What kind of impact do you expect them to have?
Better solutions for wicked problems

What are the barriers that might stand in the way?
Time

What do you hope people to learn from your presentation?
We would like to inspire the attendees with a novel approach to tackling urban mobility challenges.

About Karen Soens
Karen Soens is a sociologist with a passion for communication.
She is a researcher at LUCA, School of Arts in her hometown Ghent. She is working for the European researchproject MUV2020 and is responsible for the communicationstrategy. She has a communication agency ‘De Bosduif’, loves strong coffee and the good things in life.

She is the founder of Conceptburo De Bosduif. This agency helps organizations to reach their target group through communication design.

Karen is happy to get up early for a cup of tasty coffee

About LUCA School of Arts
LUCA School of Arts offers both professional and academic Bachelor, Master and Postgraduate degrees. More than 3,000 students can choose from more than 30 programmes in Audiovisual Arts & Techniques, Interior Design & Construction, Music & Drama and Visual Arts & Design.

About Creative Ring Sum-It!
In October 2018, during Dutch Design Week, Creative Ring organizes its first international Sum-It!

A one of a kind event, where creative communities find the tools to shape tomorrow’s urban narratives.

Sum-It! takes you beyond inspiration-by-example and provides you with actionable tools, ready to be implemented in your daily practice.

Where has the ‘mobile’ in urban ‘mobility’ gone? Cities usually tackle the Mobility Challenge with impressive infrastructural interventions, urban planning, smart traffic systems, etc. A more service design based approach is currently also catching on quite well, sometimes fuelled by a co-creative design approach.

MUV is exploring a totally new angle: gameplay! How can a game have an impact on (local) mobility behaviour. Can the data recorded and generated by the game be the glue that holds together an ecosystem of inhabitants, policy makers, local organisations and businesses, hackers and makers, data specialists and municipality departments?

We see libraries and library-buildings taking a new and crucial role in the innovation ecosystem and in the connection between creators and the broad public.

Each speaker will share his experience and vision.
For instance Bibliotheek Eindhoven has developed, based on the Design Thinking methodology, developed a tool that provides the Library-visitor with book suggestions based on user data. Library-visitors get suggestions for new books to read based on the ‘others also read’ principle. This innovation is important because the expectation of the consumer in 2018 is increasingly shifting to ‘What’s next’. Think of functionalities such as Spotify’s Discover Weekly or the recommendations of Netflix.

Smart City StarterK!t is an open source toolkit, built on an open EU standard (FiWare), to help you accelerate on your road to a Smart City. The toolkit contains policy instruments (e.g. Open Data Principles and an IoT Charter for Cities) and a translation of these basic agreements into a FiWare-compatible technology platform, allowing you to integrate Smart-City implementations into a common architecture and approach.

After this session, you will have all the knowledga and insights to implement the StarterK!t in your own city, living lab or on your own campus.

Learn all about the methodology developed by TNO on how to measure creativity at school and an instrument to monitor creativity. This session also focusses on how to implement a project in the educational curriculum. The workshop leaders encourage you to also bring in your own insights on creativity in an educational context.

This session will teach you how to measure and boost the heartbeat of your (creative) ecosystem.
For several years, DataScouts is on a mission to unlock collective intelligence within organizations and across the boundaries of those who are interconnected. DataScouts enables organizations, business ecosystems, as well as dynamic and co-evolving communities of diverse actors to create and capture new value through increasingly sophisticated models of both collaboration and competition.

In this workshop, you will be offered the Make with Espoo toolkit developed to invite citizens, associations and enterprises to co-creation of and open participation in solutions to wicked urban challenges. The workshop uses as an example the ”service centre” concept that merges everyday city life with a number of public services in a shopping mall. You will be informed about the background of the toolbox and a hands-on exercise is arranged to let you familiarise yourself with the actual tools. You will go home with a set of conceptual and practical tools, and a commitment by the City of Espoo to engage in further dialogue with interested participants.

In Espoo, the Make with Espoo toolkit has been developed under the 6Aika programme based on the learnings of Espoo re-defining their public service offering.

The insights are widely applicable for any set of services towards any given target audience.

Angela Plohman is an experienced nonprofit executive and strategic operations professional with a long track record of building and growing nonprofit organizations and programs.

She has spent close to two decades playing key leadership roles in the fields of art, culture and open source technology. She joined Mozilla, one of the world’s most recognizable tech-for-good organizations, in 2012. Read more

Mozilla’s mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all.

An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.

Koen Snoeckx, Creative Ring

More and more, I make it my goal and expertise to create “organized serendipity”: contexts that allow people and experts from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to interact. Baltan Laboratories, Creative Lab Brainport, Creative Ring… are just some of the initiatives I have the privilege of strategically being involved in. I experience on an almost daily basis the energy and new ideas that arise from collisions in purposeful- and innovation-driven ecosystems.

Curiosity is what drives my ambition. I am always on the lookout to learn from experts, in the broadest sense. Whatever is brought to me with passion, expertise and positivism has the potential to inspire me. This can literally be anything: from an explanation on how to grow vegetables to a Masterclass in theoretical physics. Read more

Co-creating social change with digital technology

In this co-creation session on digital tools to tackle social innovation, participants are invited to share their experiences on successful mechanisms to scale digital social innovation (programs, practices, instruments, institutional arrangements), and map them along several key axes (funding, capacity building, societal engagement, dissemination, etc).

This will be followed by a collective elaboration on those contributions to propose better policy. Participants will have the chance of shaping thought and policy in their fields, and will come out of the session with a rich understanding of current best practices in promoting digital innovation for societal impact.

This session is organized by the Barcelona City Council in collaboration with the DSISCALE EC-funded project (www.digitalsocial.eu).